Et in Arcadia Ego
by Lunicole
Summary: "Please take care of yourself, Ludwig." Ludwig. The name feels weird on Holy Rome's tongue, even hours after Austria has left and he is left to his own devices to prepare for the travel to Munich. Ludwig. It sounds like the name of someone else, someone who isn't old and weary like Holy Rome is, someone who doesn't have his sickly thin body and his penchant for melancholy.
1. Chapter 1

Holy Rome doesn't remember much from his stay in Paris. It had been a hazy, strange mess of shapes and colours, the soft vowels of French and the feeling of something dying, a little bit, inside his chest. There are words about freedom and empires, and a bright new future that France likes to call progress. Holy Rome doesn't dare saying anything in protest. France is elegant and refined, has always been, and maybe that's the reason why he smiles amiably as he tells Holy Rome about the new Charlemagne his Emperor aspires to be.

There's never room for two of those in Europe, Holy Rome knows, and he also knows that he's getting sicker every day, feeling his insides twist into painful knots as they're dying to be reborn into what he fears.

He'd spent the latter wars in a hazed confusion, prisoner of his own bed, his head heavy and France telling him about things he didn't really understand, things that would have made Austria and Prussia mad with fury. He remembers seeing Spain and not quite recognising him, with a new type of anger in his eyes, anger that tasted like bitterness and despair. Time had flown by, between the two of them, between dynasties and shattered dreams of world domination. It's been a harsh century for Spain too.

All of it disappears when Austria has him brought back to Vienna. There are talks about restoration and monarchy and talks about the future of his brothers and sister too, but Holy Rome doesn't get to catch any of it. He's too busy vomiting blood in his room as Bohemia makes sure to make him drink fresh water and wash his sickly, thin body. He knows what is happening to him but he doesn't have the power to fight against it anymore, conscience slowly slipping away.

"It's going to be alright," Hungary tells him with a peck on the forehead. "Don't worry, it's going to be alright."

Then, one day, he wakes up to an empty room that feels fresh and clear, and a quick look to the both of his hands makes him realise that something has changed. Surprisingly enough, he doesn't cry, doesn't feel anything other that mute relief in his chest. The agony is over, at last.

.

Holy Rome looks out the window next to his bed, and outside, the sun shines over the busy streets of a city that doesn't quite feel like a beating heart inside him.

_Regensburg._

Relief washes all over him, and he lets himself fall back into the cushions. He's not ready to wake up just yet, maybe. Downstairs, there's Austria and there's the rest of the world, with most probably a new life for him to wither and die in. It doesn't scare him nearly as much as it should. His body is still young, but he's been growing so weary, because of Prussia and Austria and Bavaria and the rest of them. Religion and politics had torn his brothers apart centuries before France came and destroyed him with his own very special brand of diplomacy. Now it's all gone, forever, and he feels better than he has done in centuries.

It takes him a few more minutes to finally get out of bed. The floor is cold under his naked feet, and he takes a moment to wash his face in the basin of water. He looks at his face in the mirrors, blue eyes, blond hair that falls into messy bangs over his forehead. He knows, now, that his face is going to age, slowly, just like the Old Man's face had aged, all those years ago, in that monastery Austria had found for him to quietly end up his remaining century. The clock has started ticking for Holy Rome too, and he wonders if he'll grown tall, now that he isn't held down by politics or wars. He can't know, not yet.

Austria is sipping coffee downstairs, dressed in the hussar uniform that still feels out of place on his wiry figure even though he's been wearing it for the decades of war that had come after France's temporary descent into madness. Had Holy Rome not known him so well, he would have said Austria looked preoccupied, but he knew that the subtle frown on his forehead was one of restrained glee. Victory makes Austria scheme, more extravagant political weddings and more deals to be stricken behind closed doors.

"How do you feel?" Austria asks him, his eyes looking out the window. Holy Rome knows exactly what the question means, and answers accordingly.  
"Fine. I… I feel great."

Austria sighs, and he's still not looking at him as silently invites him to sit down with a subtle move of the hand and serves him coffee in a porcelain cup. In Vienna, he would wait for Hungary to do it for him, but Hungary isn't with them here, Holy Rome knows it from the way his collar doesn't sit as well as it should be on his shoulders.

Holy Rome sits down, doesn't touch the coffee right away.

"I thought about finding you a monastery, as we did before with Germa- Hermann." Austria's voice wavers at his own mistake, and he stops speaking for a moment, as if the word had burned his tongue. Holy Rome knows how Austria feels about it, in a way, and he remembers the distant look on the Old Man's face, the way he spoke Latin with a slight accent that reminded Holy Rome of things he wasn't even sure had happened.

It takes a few moments for Austria to speak again. "I thought about finding you a monastery but I thought perhaps you'd like to be consulted first," he manages to say, at last, but there's still something that sounds broken in his voice. Holy Rome would feel bad about it if he still cared about Austria half as much as Austria cares about him.

"Is there anywhere you'd like to go?" Austria asks, and their eyes meet, at last.

Austria does his best to look composed, straight spine and carefully tousled hair, but Holy Rome can see beyond the tight line of his lips and the sharp curve of his eyebrows. He's won, but England and Prussia and Russia won to, even more so than he did, and the reason why Hungary isn't with them today is because Austria fears that France's ideas about grandeur, freedom and democracy will turn her into an enemy. Austria knows what this means, sending him away, and he's far too perceptive not to realise that Waterloo doesn't mean an end to France or to his ideas. Austria is far too perceptive not to realise that the world is about to change in a way he's not sure he'll be able to fight against once more.

"I… I don't know. I like Regensburg, but in a way…"

Holy Rome's words are uneasy in his mouth, but it's only because Austria, the great and magnificent Austria is breaking a little bit and he doesn't know if he should be sad or angry or relieved about that very fact.

"In a way, it feels too familiar, and I've spent too much time here. I'm not sure yet what I'll do, but I'd like to go to Munich, maybe, have a house for myself there..." He toys with his still full coffee cup awkwardly. Austria's eyes are on him, but Holy Rome is not sure what to make out it all. All he knows is that he's never going back to Vienna, not if he can help it. "Do you think Bavaria would mind?"

Austria closes his eyes as he takes another sip of coffee, answers with a measure voice. The storm in his eyes is gone as he looks at Holy Rome with his mask carefully placed back over his face, a soft smile that doesn't mean anything and a graceful little nod.

"I doubt he would. I'll make the arrangements to have your belongings sent to him. When do you wish to leave? I have to go back to Vienna soon, but I can ask Saxony to accompany you there if you wish."

Holy Rome winces involuntarily at the idea of Saxony and Bavaria being in the same room. He doesn't want to deal with this, not anymore than he wants to speak with Prussia or Westphalia, who had taken a boat to America without even saying goodbye after it had been made clear that he was no longer needed among them.

Holy Rome wonders if he'll ever find it in himself to talk to Prussia, or Austria for that matter, about how this century hadn't even gotten past twenty years without them already tearing each other apart. He can't tell, not now.

"Thank you Austria, but I think I'll be alright going there on my own."

There's more to those few simple words than it seems, and Austria understands, elegantly so, with another sip from his cup. The subsequent words they exchange with each other are meaningless babble about things that aren't Hungary, France, Prussia or Italy, which Austria always casually avoids whenever he talks with Holy Rome, because Austria is old and Austria never forgets. It's a grudge of some sort, even though Austria will never admit it out loud, how Holy Rome never got to see Italy again after all these years.

They have breakfast, bread and eggs and meat, and Austria eats as delicately as he was taught, all those years ago, when he still believe imitating France was the proper way to go around things. There's music to listen to now, Austria reminds him, the departed Mozart and the very modern Beethoven that Austria feels is the start of something new, something beautiful. Holy Rome only listens out of politeness, eats and lets his mind wander a bit, out there in the south, in the warm sun of Rome and of an Empire he could never really quite compare to. There's the dissonant echoe of France's sarcastic words in his mind, and the slight ache in his chest that remains, even though he doesn't feel it the same way as he used to yesterday.

Austria leaves after the meal with an elegant salutation and a paternalistic kiss on his forehead that never fails to make Holy Rome unreasonably angry, even though he never openly protests. The thing that does hit him, though, is when Austria gives him one last glance in the doorway, one that isn't sad but isn't indifferent just yet.

"Please take care of yourself, Ludwig."

_Ludwig._ The name feels weird on Holy Rome's tongue, even hours after Austria has left and he is left to his own devices to prepare for the travel to Munich. _Ludwig_. It sounds like the name of someone else, someone who isn't old and weary like Holy Rome is, someone who doesn't have his sickly thin body and his penchant for melancholy.

It doesn't feel like it belongs to him, not really.

Holy Rome tries not to think about it too much as the countryside defiles under his eyes and the carriage brings him to his brother's heart in the south. He's embarking on a new adventure, now, without the games and the lies, and he can feel that it might be different, this time around.

_Ludwig_ sounds like the future and it sounds like this new century in front of him, like the sound of Munich in late spring and hopes for change.


	2. Chapter 2

Bavaria is nicer with him than Holy Rome, no, _Ludwig_ would have thought. Maybe it's because he's happy with how he's managed to save himself a little bit from the flood of the last great war, or maybe it's because Munich is bustling with energy and art. Bavaria has no time for old grudges now, not even against Austria or whatever he's doing now that the storm is over. He finds a cottage for Ludwig in the outskirts of the city, comes to pick him up once in a while to go to the concerts or to the theater in an extravagant horse-drawn carriage. In all those centuries, he hasn't changed.

It's a fine life, Ludwig can't help but to feel, in his comfortable house, living off Bavaria's pocket on a small allowance he uses to . He doesn't age the same way humans age at first, but he's grown a bit taller now, and the exercise he gets from tending to the garden behind the house has made his formerly sickly body take a stronger, healthier shape. He's happier than he was, back in Regensburg, all those years ago, with the anger and the sadness and the burning inside his chest that seemed to swallow him whole.

Ludwig grows to like this place like a second home, and the seasons pass him by. He reads and writes, learns a bit of piano because he feels like he should at least try to play the new, fashionable compositions of the young Schubert Austria keeps on sending him. Bavaria seems to appreciate the impromptu concertos even though Ludwig knows he's nowhere near as skilled as the musicians of the court, but he's not Ludwig's only public nowadays. There are humans that come to his house, now, and they call Bavaria _Herr Hans Bayer_, which still sounds weird to Ludwig's ears even though he doesn't say it out loud.

"What a wonderful interpretation of Mozart!" Herr Müller says. "For a moment, I was almost transported to Vienna before the war, in the _salon_ of the Empress Maria-Theresa. Wonderful! Wonderful!"

Ludwig would say something about Mozart not being exactly the most enjoyable dinner guest, but he only gets to exchange an understanding look with Bavaria.

"Thank you _Maestro_."

Herr Müller is everything the last century was, in his own way, as he teaches Ludwig the piano in a way Austria himself never could, with patience and humour that Ludwig isn't sure he knows how to deal with. There's the reverence for Bach and the celebration of Mozart in his teaching, and always, always a slight hesitation whenever Ludwig presents him one of the more modern composers like Chopin or Mendelssohn. When Herr Müller leaves, old music teacher retiring in his native Saxony, Ludwig can send a few compositions of his own to Austria once in a while, always receiving little notes there and there over the sheet music telling him the weaknesses and the faults in his writing. Some things never really do change, but he knows Austria appreciates the gesture, in his own way.

.

It's funny, how centuries of dealing with the tragedies of war and peace and monarchy personally had somehow stunned him to the little pains and joys of individual men and women. Ludwig learns how to cry at funerals, when one of the boys from the nearby village passes away in a small tragedy involving agricultural machinery. He looks at the men there, solemn in mourning, and the women openly weeping over the casket as it leaves the small mass held in the small catholic church, and he realises that living in the palaces of power had made him forget about those things, the simple things, the real things. The world seems to be changing around him faster than it did in all those years he'd spent in Austria's house, sick and tired and wishing he'd never been born sometimes.

It rains on that day, and Ludwig looks at the grey sky with a thought for the future, and the inevitability of his own mortality. Once more, he realises that it doesn't scare him nearly as much as he thought it would.

Ludwig learns how to appreciate the taste of fresh food from the farmer's market, the cool beer in the late fall and the smiles of passing young girls. Human lives are short, but that's what makes them beautiful, in a way.

He falls in love, once. Her name is Charlotte, and she has full hips and a sharp nose, soft laughs and a sharp look to her eyes that seems to only ever really come alive when she plays on stage. She's an actress, too, and Bavaria laughs at Ludwig's pitiful attempt to woo her and at how typical his little crush is. Ludwig tries his best to look like he doesn't care.

She's playing _Emilia Galotti_, and she does it beautifully, crying and dying with an intensity that reminds Ludwig of France's theatrical fits of fury, decades ago. She opens the door of her dressing room with a knowing smile on her face and a comment about how she's seen him quite a few times assisting to her performance in the first row. It makes Ludwig bite his lips awkwardly as he gives her the best flowers he's picked especially for her in his garden earlier tonight, as he presents himself with a slight stutter that makes him feel even more like a complete idiot.

"Are you Herr Bayer's younger brother?" she asks him after she's invited him inside, placing the flowers inside a pot next to her still open makeup case.

It's a question Ludwig should have expected, in a way. He's not sure whatever it is people usually think his brother does, if they're really aware of what it all means. Most of them talk to him without seemingly realising how old and how utterly detached of some worldly matters he is, and Charlotte probably thinks he's a high-ranking government official and nothing more. It makes Ludwig sad, all of a sudden.

"Yes," he says softly, and he's not really sure where he should place himself in her changing room as she takes off her stage makeup with a dedication that looks almost out of place.

"He's quite the handsome man, isn't he?" She's joking and the polite laugh that comes out of Ludwig is insincere. "But there's something cold about him, unlike you."

He has to keep himself from saying something stupid at her words. "We've been raised differently" is both the nicest and the most honest thing that he can come up with.

She offers him a smile, on that makes Ludwig's heart beat furiously in his chest without him really wanting to. That's how it feels, he realises, and it's different from the longing he felt for Italy, centuries ago. He feels older, now, older and smaller at the same time, as if he couldn't truly possess himself the same way an empire did. Charlotte allows him to help her out of the impressive jewelry she'd been wearing for her death scene, and his hands try their best not to linger on her soft shoulders. It makes her laugh once more.

"Thank you, Ludwig," she says, and he wonders what it means, the way his name, his new name, rolls over her tongue like this. She's playing with him, but it doesn't bother Ludwig nearly as much as if it was Austria or Prussia doing the same thing. It feels different because she's a woman, and because her hair brushes her shoulders in a pretty movement as she rises up to bid him goodbye.

He blushes furiously in a way that isn't very becoming of the young man he has become when Charlotte kisses his cheek and dismisses him with a soft voice and an elegant move of the hand.

That night he gets very, very drunk with Bavaria and cries a little. It feels strange because his brother doesn't understand him when he tells him about the tragedy of the simple bourgeois existence, of that strange longing that drags him to look at the past sometimes, how emotions aren't the same anymore, aren't tied to the earth and the changing seasons as much as they used to.

"You've read too much of that Goethe guy," he says with an odd sort of amusement that makes Ludwig angry enough to hit his shoulder petulantly. Bavaria laughs more and Ludwig sighs. His brother cannot understand how it feels like, to have your own mind and your own body truly belong to yourself, and to feel it break in a much more personal level than all the treaties and wars and alliances in the world.

Ludwig doesn't go back to see her playing Lessing, and she leaves, as actresses always do, but not without a little souvenir.

"Pretty, isn't she?" the king asks him as they're visiting the Gallery of the Beauties along with Bavaria, who can't help but to feel that slight amusement at his brother's obvious discomfort. "Did you see her perform?"

The king, who, because of some sort of strange turn of destiny, share the same name as he does, is agreeable enough, even though Ludwig can't really help but to feel uneasy in Nymphenburg. It's the air of the city, he tells himself, or maybe it's because he's not used to heads of state anymore.

He nods politely, with a blush he can't get himself to hide, and King Ludwig laughs good-naturedly. Still, there's this weird feeling in his chest as Ludwig hears him talking about his kingdom like he owns it, and when he sees Bavaria quiet expression as he speaks. Ludwig knows that he's out of it all, out of those games and those feelings that come from a heart made of stones and wars and people walking through its streets every day, but he also knows his brothers. He knows that there's only a very thin line that keeps them to tear each other apart now.

.

There are letters from his brothers, from the North, and the East, and the West, and the South. Austria is the one who writes the most, endless letters full of half-sincere niceties and verbose descriptions of Vienna's latest intrigues, but Saxony's handwriting is prettier. Baden is the only one who never, ever writes about politics, but that's just because he's the only one clever enough to realise that Ludwig, with his new name and his new life, has had enough of the ever changing course of history in his centuries as someone else, someone that feels like a different person from the man he's become.

Prussia doesn't send him more than a few lines one time, which Ludwig doesn't answer to as honestly as he should. It's not because he hates Prussia but more because he's still afraid of him, in a way, because he never got to read Prussia the same way he could read Austria or Hesse.

He's already a man in 1848, and he's feeling strange about it, as he's never really grown into anything bigger than a sickly teen in all those centuries of life. When revolution swipes over Europe, he hears about France taking up the streets again in Paris and Austria calling up on Russia to crush Hungary's rebellion. Bavaria goes to his own set of trouble and Ludwig, because he knows and because he can't bring himself to care all that much at the same time, doesn't take over the streets of Munich against King Ludwig and his scandalous mistress.

He's not sure what it all comes, when Prussia says things he doesn't mean the same way Austria does. Yet, Ludwig doesn't find it in himself to refuse his invitation to come to Berlin.

"He probably wants to brag or something." Bavaria dismisses him when they have their usual sunday afternoon _Kaffee und Kuchen_. "Don't worry about it, it's not like he could do anything to you anymore."

Ludwig nods, but he still feels uneasy about it. Bavaria doesn't know Prussia nearly as well as Ludwig did, all those centuries ago, and he's always been far too laid back, as if going with the flow wasn't something that might end up swallowing him alive. Maybe it's Ludwig fretting over nothing. He's been doing that quite a lot lately, as if his brothers needed any of this, as if Austria needed anything after he'd had Hungary's fingers broken one by one from what he's heard from Bohemia. It's dumb to be afraid of Prussia, especially since Ludwig doesn't amount to anything anymore, and he writes him back with the intention of seeing the Baltic Sea's charming scenery this summer.

He leaves early in the morning, with only a few words of instruction to the servants of the house, his travel coat on his shoulders and hopes for the best hiding themselves in a few melancholy sighs and the short look he gives to the sunrise. Prussia and him haven't had the best relationship haven't had the best relationship, of all the years they've had together, but maybe these last few years Ludwig has shouldn't be spent on old grudges anymore.

Prussia's welcome in his house is both ridiculously warm and succeeding in making Ludwig incredibly uneasy. It's probably because of the uniform Prussia refuses to take off even though he is off-duty and the way he speaks like they've always been the best of friends.

"You got big," he says as he punches his shoulder once with a calculated strength. Ludwig doesn't know what to makes out of it just yet. "I take Bavaria's treating you well?"

He's different from the last time he'd seen him, but that's only because he somehow managed to patch himself up after the war into something better, something stronger. And yet, Ludwig's taller than Prussia, now, and it feels weird because he doesn't even remember not having to look up to meet his eyes. Prussia crackles uglily at his own joke, dragging Ludwig into a hug that feels out of place.

Last time he was alone with Prussia, somewhere in the last century, he had ended up breaking the entirety of Saxony's porcelain collection and storming away. He knew Prussia had resented him both for being weak and for being too much like Austria, in that other life that seemed so distant now. He tries to smile.

"Yes, Munich is nice. Maybe you should come for a visit sometimes, too?"

Prussia makes a face.

"Nah, Munich ain't for me right now, and I got everything I need here."

He rolls his eyes and give Ludwig another snickering punch to the shoulder.

"Besides I ain't sure you and Bavaria could stand me for more than a few days at the time, am I right?"

There's more laughing coming from him, and Ludwig's somehow forced smile manages to stay. He will try, he'd said to himself, and he intends to make the best out of it.

Prussia's good mood never seems to waver, at least to Ludwig's eyes. He drags Ludwig around Berlin like an over-excited child during the day and to the opera or the theatre at night, filling their days with frightful efficiency.

The one thing that scares Ludwig in a very strange way is how Prussia never seems to sleep. It's the changing century, he tells himself, the wheel of time going faster under the power of machinery.

"Did you enjoy this?" he asks as they're leaving the concert hall along with a crowd that mixes both the sharp colours of the rich _junkers_ and the more sober looks of the common folk. It's one of those modern productions, an opera that is desperately trying not to be an opera, and it make Ludwig wonder if there isn't a hidden meaning to all of this. There's always a hidden meaning to everything Prussia does, in a way.

It's true that, as Prussia had mentioned in his letters, Berlin had changed in a few short decades. Ludwig doesn't know how what he should think about this, in this mortal life and this mortal body, but he tries to look like he enjoys it, the whole show Prussia is putting on for him. He lets out a somewhat softer smile.

"I'm not sure yet. It's very different from what I'm used to."

Prussia snorts.

"Of course it is. You've had enough of Austria's musical picks for a lifetime. Italian opera is for old ladies and sissies anyway."

Ludwig would comment about that too, but he's very certain that he doesn't want to get into a fight with Prussia on the topic of Austria, of all people. Prussia has been delicate enough not to mention politics so far, and Ludwig feels like he consider himself grateful enough and not push his luck. Prussia has always been a tricky one to deal with, with the fits of anger and the headstrong temperament that always clashed with Saxony's more reserved notion of diplomacy. _It's the rivers of Polish blood that run through his veins_, Westphalia had once said with a small hint of disgust in his voice, and it had made Ludwig smile a little bit. Now Westphalia had gone, forever, and it made Ludwig wonder if he'd ever try to contact them one last time

He leaves Berlin for the Baltic shore the next day with a strange feeling in his belly, and Prussia cracks a few jokes as he helps him packs that make Ludwig's stomach feel funny. He doesn't want to dwell on the implications of whatever Prussia is saying about France, about England, about whatever it is that is brewing in Italy and about Denmark.

He'd told himself that this, all of this was over, and yet it seems like his family and their games always come back to him, one way or another.


	3. Chapter 3

Prussia probably changes his mind about Italian opera after Austria gets crushed in a war against France, Ludwig comes to realise. He hasn't received any news from Austria ever since, and it makes him wonder how exactly his defeat against Italy trying to break free destroyed him. Ludwig is out of this all now, out of their games, but this had been personal, all those years ago, when Austria had told him with a stern but understanding voice that this was punishment he had to accept for the war he'd dragged all of Europe into. There's something like revenge in his hand as he writes to Austria once more, and it's all caressing whispers and off-handed comments that have the same distinctive style as Austria's own very peculiar pen.

Still, he can't bring himself to write to Italy now, now that he knows that everything is over, that maybe, maybe it could work. It's the same weight as always, over his shoulder, making his back ache under years that had flown away too fast. He's growing old, but not in the same way he'd grown old before, in that eternal adolescent body that had made him always sick and weak. There's strength in his limbs now, but they are made of flesh and bone, and they'll rot, one day, just like the bones of his brothers and sisters, all those years ago.

The inevitability of his own death hits him in the face for the first time in years that seem to go by so slowly now, as a familiar figure approaches his house with something like a smile and memories that he should have let go off centuries ago.

"Hello. Do you remember me?"

It's still there, the singing accent in a language that almost feels foreign on the tongue, with all the inflections at the wrong places and the singing sound of days long gone.

It's Italy.

Ludwig tries not to think about the rights and wrongs of them meeting again. In fact, he tries not to think about anything, to smile when it is polite to smile, looking at Italy but never really seeing him. It's strange because Austria isn't here, not really, not anymore, Austria isn't anywhere but in dreams of a glory long gone, and Ludwig shouldn't feel anything about this except he does.

He misses it. He misses the way things had been, the past, now. It's an odd kind of feeling, the kind of feeling he hasn't felt in such a long time. Italy hasn't changed, not really. He's taller, and stronger, and no longer wearing the servant's clothes, but he's hasn't grown old, not the way Ludwig has ever since the war. Ludwig has grey hair and tired features, and the look of a man that has already left his best years, while Italy is as fresh as a rose, when he uses his hands to speak and giggle like a child. It hits Ludwig, hard.

"I thought about you a lot, in the last few years. You know, they never did tell me what had become of you, not even France."

Italy laughs, and it's beautiful and sadly distant. It sounds like tinkling crystal and sunny days in Rome, and so many things Ludwig had forgotten about the past. He closes his tired eyes.

"I guess they thought it was for the best."  
"Probably. But still, I wish they'd let me see you. You know, I really did love you, all those years ago."

Italy's serious, or maybe he isn't. Ludwig can't know for sure, or maybe he doesn't want to know. It would be too sad.

Maybe that's the reason why he can't remember what Italy said after he leaves, can't remember anything but the soft laugh and a few words about how pretty Venice is at this time of the year. He can't remember if Italy mentioned Rome or not, the glory of a past long gone, the sounds of centuries that have gone by.

"You alright?" Bavaria asks, and Ludwig can only sigh.  
"I don't know."

It's Italy's visit, and the letters, sometimes. Ludwig realises that he can't fall in love anymore, not exactly the same way as he used to. He's too young to die, he still feels, but he's too old to truly die.

It's strange, how time goes by. Bavaria doesn't get the time to worry much about Ludwig anymore, or at least not as much as he worries about the other Ludwig, the one who wears a crown, hates war, loves Wagner and wishes to live in a fairytale. The king is loved, too, with his sharp features and dreamy eyes, and the century tears him apart, as it always does to bright young futures.

The first and only time they meet, the swan king, with his sharp eyes and strong features, gives Ludwig a passing look and a sigh, before turning towards Bavaria without much of a care, and something that looks like it's about to break in the way he stands.

"Is it really your older brother?" the king asks, a bit out of what seems like disinterested curiosity, and there's weariness his tone. He doesn't like talking to Bavaria, because Bavaria is work, unlike the magnificent castles, and unlike Wagner and the true arts. Ludwig can understand that.

"It is," Bavaria says softly.  
"How strange. His eyes look younger than yours."

There's a distant look in the king's eyes as he says that, but Ludwig trie not to pay any mind to it. He doesn't want to know, not really, what burns behind the young king's sharp eyes and noble features. He can feel it, still, in the tone and the inflection of his voice, even though Bavaria doesn't jave the courage to realise it himself.

When they get back home, Ludwig sits at the piano, his eyes flying over the old music scores of Schumann boredly. He realises that time has gone by too fast, that he no longers understand the times the way he used to. He'd seen the great Wagnerian operas in Munich, and he'd seen the king transfixed in their contemplation, but he doesn't understand them the way he had understood the compositions Austria used to send him, years ago.

"Austria doesn't write music anymore," Bavaria jokes with a sour look on his face that means more than it should. "He only whines."

Bavaria isn't wrong, not about that at least. Austria has changed, the same way Prussia has changed, and Saxony, and France, and Italy. They've changed in a more intimate way Ludwig could, in all those years greying and withering in human flesh. They've changed because their bones, their blood and their flesh doesn't belong to them, not the way it does to Ludwig. They've changed because men have changed, in this new century of engines and foggy cities, of kingdoms and millennial empires shaking under their own weight.

It doesn't surprise Ludwig when the king of Bavaria goes mad, mad, mad. It's the name they share, maybe, and the dreamy look of the swann prince wishing so much to be something else than himself.

The wheel of time turns, endlessly. Ludwig grows old. The hair on his head takes the silvery colour of maturity, bit by bit, and they talk about him as Herr Bayer's uncle with a commiserating smile that makes Ludwig's hands curl into fists. He plays the piano, too, but the way his fingers move on the keys has changed, a lot, ever since the war, ever since his centuries as a sickly, forever young adolescent. Spring turns into summer, and summer turns into fall.

Prussia wins, Austria loses, and then it's France's turn to do so, harshly enough for Ludwig to feel maybe, maybe a little uneasy when Prussia writes to him about a bright new future, and their homeland, their fatherland, about to take the hardness of steel. It's because his hands are wrinkled with age now, whereas Prussia's haven't changed, his writing just as sharp, while Ludwig's penmanship has grown shaky with age. Bavaria is mad with anger and resentment, and he refuses to leave Munich with Ludwig on the way to Paris, to the bright lights of things that went away more than a century ago.

It's a seemingly endless ride that finally bring him there, even though the world turns faster now, under the wheels of the locomotive and the power of steel and blood. It's because Ludwig is old, now, maybe, older than he should be. He feels it in his bones in the most intimate way, the creaking of time, the stomach-deep tiredness, the achings of a body that is waiting to die in manners that are all too familiar. Ludwig is an old man with decaying teeth and snow white hair has replaced his once bright gold locks. Ludwig is dying for a second time, a most definitive time, and once more he should be terrified except he isn't.

There's bright sunshine in Paris, and the city still looks like a wreck from the siege and the revolt and the war. Ludwig doesn't feel things as he once did, but he knows, maybe with a bit of amusement, that France is fuming, as he always is when things like these happen. Foreign troops. The colours of a new decade getting on its gear, colours that aren't exactly what France had thought them to me. Large boulevards and avenues have replaced the small, busy streets Ludwig had last seen, but the smell in the air is the same, the putrid effluves of the Seine and the early winter damp cold.

It feels odd to meet Prussia, who hasn't changed one bit, even after the decades and the wars, his eyes still as restless, his body still as sharp. Prussia won't go away like Holy Rome had done, almost a century ago, Ludwig can feel it. Prussia will go with a bang, because this is what Prussia does, has always done.

"I want to show you something," he says, and his grin reeks of dead bodies all over the battlefields of France.

The streets smell of modernity they all dreamed about, years ago, fighting wars after war for the triumph of the all mighty rationality. It smells like ashes, like human sweat and bile and grime, like this whole century that ended up eating itself alive. Ludwig feels it because he is old, with grey hair and regrets, but he's glad that at least he's not Prussia, who revels in it with a self-satisfied grin.

"Smile a little bit, will you?" Prussia says, as the horse-drawn carriage crosses a bridge that feels both familiar and distant. It's been so many years... "We're in the most beautiful city in the world, don't you know?"

France's final defeat has to be complete, because Prussia is merciless. It's towards that same house that overlooks the Île de la Cité. Ludwig knows that's where they're going; he recognises the road, even after the years, and remembers Austria, maybe, before he'd died a first time, with pursed lips and defeat all over his face after handing him to France. He doesn't say anything.

Prussia, receiving no answer, laughs more. "Human life made you a sad little old fellow, Holy Rome."  
"My name is Ludwig."

Ludwig's face is turned towards the window, and he doesn't need to look to know that Prussia's smile hasn't gone, even though it did lose its spark.

It's Prussia that helps him out of the carriage, and it's strange to feel like a senile old man while Prussia himself doesn't look a day older than when France beat him into a pulp, decades ago. It's also Prussia that leads him inside, not presenting him to France as Ludwig would have thought as some kind of unfunny twist of fate, but to somebody entirely new.

It's the steps, maybe, the way he way his shoulder tense as their gazes meet. Ludwig doesn't know.

"Hello, Germany," Prussia says, and it shouldn't feel like dying all over again, but it does.

Ludwig dies exactly a century after the war, the one that had killed Holy Rome, during the first year of what would become the new century's Great War. On that day, the streets of Berlin, where he now lives, are bustling with energy, with national fervour, with the sound of Prussia's typical pedantic militaristic pride. No one yet knows that it will bring him his downfall. Trains come and go from Potsdamer Platz, uniformed men come and go die in the West, in the East, in submarines and in airplanes, formidable new machines of war and death.

But Ludwig doesn't know about it. Ludwig is an old man, and he has stopped caring years ago, when Prussia had shown him his reflection in what seemed like a broken mirror.

They bury him in the rain, ugly rain of late September that makes the Spree ever murkier than it should be. Bavaria isn't there; he's on the Eastern front, charging the Russians on horseback for what he doesn't know yet will be the last time. Austria isn't here; he's saying goodbye to his empire, one day at the time, wondering why he's so cold all the time, and why his time is slowly slipping between his fingers, playing the new, strange sounds of Arnold Schoenberg on the grand piano

Prussia isn't there either. In the skies of Alsace-Lorraine, his airplane flies, dances as the earth burns.

There's only Germany, Germany and the rain, his crisp uniform still dry under his black umbrella. He's about to leave, too, like Saxony and Hamburg and the rest. It's not a big burial, something simple, something small and quiet, as Ludwig himself had been in the final years of his life.

Still, there's something oddly tragicomic about the whole thing, Germany can't help but to think. It doesn't keep him from leaving flowers on the tomb, a solemn expression on his face as he leaves, never to return.


End file.
